March 2013 critical care journal club

No abstract available. Article truncated at 150 words. Brill S. Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us. Time. February 20, 2013. PDF available at: http://livingwithmcl.com/BitterPill.pdf (accessed 4/2/13). Editor’s Note: We had a special journal club in March. First, we reviewed an article from Time magazine rather than a traditional medical journal. Second, Paul Stander MD, the chief medical officer at Banner Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, led the discussion and agreed to author the journal club. This seemed appropriate since much of the article focuses on overbilling and administrative costs of care. The recent lengthy cover story article in Time Magazine described in great deal what many of us practicing physicians have realized for a long time – our health care system is highly dysfunctional and much of that dysfunction is a result of an arcane and outmoded financing mechanism. This payment system has a litany of perverse incentives that encourage wasteful and often ineffective care while not …